What The World Has Never Seen

By Rebecca Horne

What’s your most personal belonging? And how would you like to see it on the Internet? With the question “What can people show that the world has never seen before?” Michel Szulc Krzyzanowski’s photography-based project “What The World Has Never Seen” (WTWHNS), explores how people around the world define privacy and intimacy. To find out what people world-wide consider their most personal belonging, the artist and his team have hit the ground running—for two weeks they are meeting candidates for this project in New York City. From NYC, they will go on to Moscow, Amsterdam, Jerusalem, Accra, Sao Paolo, Kocaeli (Turkey), Soppong (Thailand).

Mr. Szulc Krzyzanowski: “With social media we see a tendency that more and more people share their personal stories and images with the world. Simultaneously, the same technological developments cause many to experience social isolation. What becomes of the quality of intimacy? Is the exclusivity of intimacy demolished by the Internet? The WTWHNS team invites people to share their intimacy with us. Crucial, however, is the way we deal with the information they share with us. This means keeping the images exclusive and anonymous. The most beautiful aspect of this documentary project is the unpredictability.” The WTWHNS team will be publishing a book, mounting an exhibition and running a website and an ongoing blog showing the results of the survey.